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Sunday, 31 May 2015

One of my first papers in 2012 (here), was related with support vector (SVM) machines. It was a simple algorithm, that improved the method to compute the isoelectric point of peptides using SVM. The first time I presented the results to my colleagues, one of them ask me: "are you planning to publish this?". One of the senior co-authors said, "we can write a big research manuscript, explaining other algorithms, compare them, use other datasets, etc". Another said (computer scientist), "we can explore other features from peptides including topological indexes.. and write a full research manuscript about.."....

"I was very clear from the very beginning, We will write a Technical Note or Letter. "

Sunday, 10 May 2015

In my initial post in this blog, I will teach you how to use a Docker container with the Trans-Proteomic Pipeline software installation.

Docker is a great new technology that allows us to create GNU/Linux containers with specific software inside. All kinds of software can be "containerized", including ones that rely on graphical user interfaces.

The whole idea of using a Docker container is built on having a software that is isolated from the host OS and can interact with the outside world. GNU/Linux containers, like Docker, are very useful even in the scientific world where bioinformatics applications are used every day.

Using Docker with bioinformatics software helps to solve some issues we face, like reproducibility, for example. We wrote about this last year [1] . You can also check for more containers with bioinformatics applications in the BioDocker webpage.

Here I am going to describe to you how to install and use one of the most powerful software for proteomics data analysis, the Trans-Proteomics Pipeline (TPP).

Unfortunately, if you are a GNU/Linux user (like me) and your job involve MS/MS data analysis (also, like me), you will probably have some harsh time trying to install TPP. Almost all the tutorials available on the Web focus on the Windows users, so novice bioinformaticians or those that are not too versatile with GNU/Linux can have some hard times.

With a Docker TPP container you can just download it and use it on the command line, the container it self behaves like an executable, so image the possibilities.

Lets begin preparing your environment for Docker. The first thing you have to do is to install some libraries that are essential for the Docker daemon to run properly. If you are running an Ubuntu OS, you can skip this step. If you are on a different OS, like Linux Mint for example you need to follow these steps.